How to Plant a Fruit Tree
Hi, I’m Ken Smith with Furney’s Nursery, what I’m planting is honeycrisp bettel, you probably all seen it in the grocery stores, it’s fairly new in the market, really crisp, really sweet, ripens late in the year and it keeps really well. So it’s an excellent apple for our area. It like the climate here real well. First thing I wanna do is I wanna amend the soil mix a little bit, Dr. Earth fertilizer. And they wanna use about 2 cups for every 5 gallons worth of dirt, and I’ve got a pile of dirt out here I took out of the hole, it looks like it’s probably about 15 gallons, so I’m gonna use about 6 cups of this fertilizer. I’m just gonna take this and sprinkle it all around, half the box, that should be about right. I’m just gonna go in here and stir it up, just mix it, keep it going like that. That’s the soil we’re gonna put back in the hole with the fruit tree. We’re just gonna put it in the hole like that, and start putting the soil in and mix it with our soil building compost here, about 1 part soil to 1 part soil building compost. I’m gonna get the airpockets out of it with my foot, it helps steadies the tree there. A few more. Get that soil building compost in there and, okay, I think we’re getting pretty close now, just a couple more shovel full of dirt. Just gonna put that in there, try to leave that side out if I can, but it doesn’t hurt anything, if it does get in there. Little more top soil building compost all around the stem. Remember I wanna leave this bud up on top of the ground, so I’m gonna work that in like, like we did before. Take out all the airpockets, and now, I’m gonna top this with this soil building compost all away around. That will help keep the moisture in and there’s good earthworm food, it will get the earthworms working in there and they’ll bring that compost down into the root zone and even more. I wanna make sure that I’m gonna run my shovel handle across here to check my bud union, yup, I’m at the right height, just where I want it with that union, just above the ground there. All I want to do now is water, and a little bit of light pruning. Okay, now that we got it all planted, it’s ready to go, it’s been watered in, we need to prune it a little bit. Now, we just did a video on pruning on fruit trees and I want you to, if you’ve seen that video, forget everything that I’ve told you in there, because there’s a little change that we do with a newly planted tree, especially if they’re root tree. Instead of cutting the tips off, I have, let me tell you that trees plants produce and auxin, A-U-X-I-N, that goes to the very top of the tree. It keeps the very tip growing, and that auxin produces a chemical that stimulates root growth. So if I go up here and prune this, like I would a regular establish fruit tree, I’m gonna stop its ability to produce an auxin that stimulates the roots. It won't kill the tree if you do it, but it will grow roots a lot faster, it’ll get it establish a lot faster. So all I’m gonna do right now, I’m gonna take off this little side branches, these little laterals that aren’t gonna amont to anything. Kinda open it up, it’s gonna be real easy this time and I’m gonna take off, this is a small branch down here, I think I’m gonna get rid of it. And I’m gonna leave it alone till probably August or September when it’s well establish. By that time, the ends of the branches will have produce that auxin, the roots will be well stimulated, and then you can go ahead and prune it back like I showed you in the other video. And simply by cutting it back about a third, cutting it above and outside bud, trying to form a candelabra if you want, that’s the best shape to think of when you’re pruning a fruit tree. They need to be open in the center and they have branches around the outside.